Disturbing new details about parents who trapped and tortured their 13 kids emerge

Horrifying new details of the home life of 13 children allegedly held captive and tortured by their parents have emerged, just days after they were ‘rescued’ by police.

Allen Turpin, 57, and his wife, Louise Anna Turpin, 49 were arrested and charged with torture and child endangerment after police discovered their children— aged 2 to 29—starving in their Californian home.

Riverside County district attorney Mike Hestrin said the children were tied up with ropes by their parents, and restrained by chains and padlocks when one sibling managed to break free. He told press the children had not been allowed to shower more than once a year.

"Punishment would last weeks or even months at a time," Hestrin alleged,CNNreports.

As theBBCreports, Mr Turpin is also facing a charge of performing a lewd act on a child in addition to the torture and force imprisonment charges levelled at both paretns.

Police were alerted to the Turpin home after one of the children, a 17-year-old girl, allegedly escaped on Sunday morning and used a mobile phone she had found in the house to call authorities, The New York Timesreports.

“Deputies located what they believed to be 12 children inside the house but were shocked to discover that seven of them were actually adults,” a police statement reads.